Fuck the Breakfast Club
by A.Diamond
Summary: A juvenile delinquent and a daddy's girl are confined to the principal's office after a fight, waiting for their fathers to pick them up. It would be tense even if their dads weren't dating; but as things stand, they're going to have a very long day.


#A juvenile delinquent and a daddy's girl are confined to the principal's office after a fight, waiting for their fathers to pick them up. It would be tense even if their dads weren't dating; but as things stand, they're going to have a very long day.

Principal Zachariah Adler had had enough. Someone had dented his Mercedes overnight, an idiot barista had given him a mocha instead of a macchiato, and now he had to deal with adolescent shits who would rather ruin his morning than be grateful their parents hadn't sold them to Bangladeshi sweatshops like they so clearly deserved.

He stormed out of his office, glaring at the two teenagers sulking on too-small plastic chairs in the small reception area. "Winchester! Novak!" he bellowed. They looked at him. "I've called both your fathers, but seeing as they're reasonably productive members of society with jobs and responsibilities, they won't be able to come get you until the end of the day. So, since you couldn't confine your little after-school rumble to after school hours, you've earned yourselves an entire day of sitting here together. Isn't that just wonderful!"

He turned, about to close himself in his office and relax with a game of solitaire for a few hours, but paused to clarify an important point: "I'll be checking on you regularly, so no shenanigans or bloodshed, and no friends coming to visit. Actually, I can't believe I forgot! Your phones."

He could tell the little twerps wanted to argue, but he'd earned the reputation he heard whispered behind his back, so they only hesitated for a moment before pulling out their smartphones of the day and handing them over. "Now behave, ladies. Maybe you can even take advantage of this time to become happy little BFFs and save me from having to deal with you again."

Whistling cheerfully, he shut the door and pulled up a game of FreeCell. As soon as the principal left, Claire Novak turned her glare on Emma Winchester. "Just because our dads are fucking, doesn't mean I have to like you."

"I wouldn't want you to like me, psycho," Emma retorted, rubbing at her shoulder. It still hurt from the backpack strap that had been yanked against it, and she suspected it would continue to for a few days. "I'd love it if you would leave me the hell alone at school, though. My dad's not gonna dump Cas over you trying to beat me up, if that's what you were hoping for."

"He should. He would if he cared more about you than getting laid. I'm a delinquent and Cas is a shitty father, so his little princess would be better off without our terrible influence." Claire sneered. With the heavy liner and mascara she wore, the gesture made her narrowed eyes look charred; Emma chose to avert her gaze rather than face the unnerving, nearly demonic expression.

Claire huffed out a condescending snort when Emma bent over to pull a notebook out of her bag instead of rising to the bait, but otherwise let silence fall between them. It held for a few minutes before Claire started drumming her fingers against the underside of her chair, nails clacking against the plastic. When Emma glanced over, trying to keep her head bent over her physics homework and only move her eyes, Claire was staring at her with a challenging smirk. She looked back down at the paper.

A few problems later, Claire let out a dramatic sigh, sagged down in the chair, and kicked her feet out with two loud thumps that Emma couldn't help tracking to a pair of combat boots. They were black and scuffed and looked more like Army surplus than Hot Topic. The jeans they disappeared into were faded and torn on the knees and thighs, though that damage was clearly cosmetic. It wasn't until her eyes were halfway up Claire's gray canvas jacket that she realized how long she'd been staring. She looked up guiltily. Claire's smile slipped into a dangerously sly grin.

"So that's how it is, huh? Daddy's little dyke."

Emma slammed her workbook shut as previously controlled anger steamed over her thoughts. "First of all? Don't fucking call me that. Second, so what if I am? Doesn't mean I'm checking out your crazy ass, bitch. I'm just trying to figure out what your damage is, that's all."

Claire gaped momentarily, like she'd forgotten she was supposed to be putting on her stupid rebellious unaffected attitude, and said, "Huh. You just got a bit more interesting."

"Yeah, sure. Teenage lesbian in her native habitat, I'm sure it's fascinating." Before Claire could come back with something sarcastic, Emma snapped open her notes without dropping her glare. "You don't know anything about me. I'll play nice next time my dad and Cas want us to spend time together, but otherwise? Don't talk to me."

Emma caught an expressive eye roll before returning her attention to her work, but Claire didn't say anything else. Over an hour of silence later, which had been broken only by Adler briefly sticking his balding head out, Claire puffed out her cheeks and blew out a long breath, dropping her English anthology to the floor. It landed on its edge, sprawling open and bending some of the middle pages, so she kicked it over onto the front cover. Emma twitched, but didn't look up.

"God, this is boring." Not even a blink that time. "Come on, you can't possibly be that into, what, physics?" No reaction. "You've been working on that for like an hour, so you're either a brown-nosing overachiever or you suck at physics and should just give up now." Nothing.

Giving up for the time being, Claire leaned back in the chair and tilted her head back, though she slid her eyes to the side to keep watching Emma. She gave it a few minutes, until the other girl's shoulders relaxed and her fingers were no longer white around the pencil, then she bellowed, "Adler!"

The way Emma jerked in her seat, notebook flying as she started in shock, was extremely gratifying. She only had a moment to glare before the principal's door flew open, and the man himself wore a scowl deep enough to make Emma's look like a smile.

"Listen here you sniveling little—"

"I'm menstruating," Claire interrupted. He clearly tried to suppress the way his entire face wanted to scrunch towards his nose in disgust, but he failed and it was even better than she'd expected. "I need to go to the bathroom."

"Okay, fine. You have"—he checked his watch—"fifteen minutes. Take the other one with you, that way she can tell me if you try to meet up with your little delinquent friends or smoke or whatever else you do to try and get Daddy's attention."

Claire barely resisted the urge to flip him off. "Whatever. Come on, mathlete, maybe I can lock you in one of the stalls." She got up and was almost in the hallway when Adler spoke.

"Oh, please do! See, if you do, I finally get to expel you. Since you've been kicked out of every other school in the district already, maybe you can go join Mommy in the nuthouse. We all know you're headed there eventually." Emma watched Claire freeze mid-step, her shoulders pulling up and forward for barely a moment before she pushed them back and stormed off, not waiting to see if Emma followed.

The trip to the bathroom was silent except for the stomp of Claire's boots, which echoed loudly enough in the corridor to make conversation seem unnecessary anyway. Emma hung a few steps back, not wanting to risk Claire's wrath by being too close or too far behind, and studied the other girl.

She'd known Claire was an angry person, had had the misfortune to interact with her enough at school and the couple times their dads had brought them someplace together to pick up on that, but this was a level of rage even greater than she'd expected. Definitely more than she'd seen when Claire had been shoving her around earlier.

Emma wasn't exactly unfamiliar with tempers; she and her dad both had them, though his had lessened over the past few years. But they burned hot and quick, then recovered. It was never this simmering hatred that seemed to fuel Claire, flaring up when pushed and never dying back all the way, even in moments that should be calm.

Figured that her mom had issues, Emma thought viciously. She definitely didn't get her violent crazy from Cas. As far as she'd been able to tell, Claire had only started living with him recently. She was new to the school mid-year, though it sounded from Principal Adler that this wasn't the first school she'd caused trouble in since the custody change. Cas had lived in town for over a decade—though Emma's dad had only met him recently, at one of the parents' nights. So she must've already been a disaster by the time her mom had broken enough to lose custody.

Emma knew it was an awful thing to think, but she hated to feel guilty about it after Claire had taken her psychosis out on her. And her backpack.

Try as she might, though, Emma couldn't get rid of the annoying empathy that kept trying to get in the way of her hatred. Regardless of how awful a person Claire was, it couldn't be easy to have your mom—institutionalized? Committed? Imprisoned? Emma didn't know exactly, but it had to suck. Especially at sixteen. And she didn't know the story of what had happened between Cas and Claire's mom, either, but she'd picked up enough to know that Cas hadn't been part of her life for a while before she'd come to live with him.

Okay, so she felt a little bad for Claire. But plenty of people had fucked up home lives, and Claire at least still had both her parents, whatever condition they were in.

Claire pushed through the bathroom door and slid inside. Naturally, she didn't hold it open for Emma, who had to catch it before it swung into her face, and she didn't actually go into one of the stalls, either. She jumped up onto the counter holding a row of sinks, butt settling in the space between the wall and the first basin, feet dangling just off the ground, and dug around in her jacket pocket.

She pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Of course. The look on Emma's face as Claire lit up was almost worth the expulsion that was bound to follow. Upsetting Cas made up the rest of the reward. Well, plus making him shell out to try sending her to another school, on top of having to still pay for this semester that she knew he could barely afford. Maybe he'd finally try a boarding school and she could get away from him for a while.

She just hoped the spoiled little brat would let her finish before running off to tattle. Nicotine soothed the angry seething inside her skull, settled down her restlessness for a while and helped her focus. She wanted to be in top form for the blowout with Cas, because it was bound to be a good one: attacking his boyfriend's daughter, smoking in school, cursing out the principal—she hadn't yet, but she would once Cas got there.

He'd be furious and ashamed, which served him fucking right.

Instead of bolting to rat Claire out, Emma fixed her with the same squinty focus she'd given her homework and asked, "Seriously?"

Claire took a long drag and held it until her lungs started to burn, then blew the stream of smoke directly at Emma. She was too far away for it to really get into her face before dispersing, but it still earned a nose-wrinkling grimace. Claire flashed her an unfriendly grin, Emma rolled her eyes and looked away, and Claire counted it as a victory. She turned her head away to gaze out the window and wait for the inevitable.

But Emma still didn't leave. Out of the corner of her eye, Claire could see her shifting her weight uneasily from foot to foot. Finally, she came out with, "Look, what Principal Adler said..." She trailed off, clearly expecting Claire to help her out with some kind of reaction.

Fuck that. A couple of crows landed on the power line across the street, and Claire watched them flap and peck at each other until they'd settled on a mutually agreeable division of the space.

"I don't know the deal," Emma tried again, "and it's none of my business. He shouldn't have said that, not in front of me and not like that. But he did, so if there's anything you want to... My mom died when I was—"

"Fuck no, princess. I'm not having this conversation with you."

Claire stubbed out her cigarette against the sink, letting the satisfaction of the little round dark spot she left behind burn away her discomfort from Emma's bullshit attempt at bonding or whatever. Flicking the butt into the nearest trashcan, she pushed past Emma and yanked open the door.

"You coming or what?" she asked without looking back.

Emma didn't say anything, but Claire heard a sigh and approaching footsteps, so she just kept on walking. Back in the waiting room outside the principal's office, Claire kept shooting Emma looks like she was waiting for her to summon Adler and turn her in. But Claire smoking hadn't caused her any particular harm, in the grand scheme of things, and she wasn't really looking to give Claire any more reason to target her.

Besides, if Principal Adler had at any point bothered to stick his head out and check that they'd returned safely, which he hadn't, he'd be able to smell it on her without Emma needing to say anything at all.

Eventually Claire's glances started to turn speculative instead of suspicious, and that was worrying. Emma decided to go for broke and appeal to the hint of humanity she'd seen when Claire had been hurt.

"Look, whatever you're going to do, just don't take it out on my dad, okay? He's been happier than I've ever seen him. He hasn't had a real relationship since my mom died. I get that you hate me or whatever, but leave him out of it. Don't ruin this just because we don't get along."

Claire actually laughed loud enough that Adler cracked the door of his office and shushed them. "I'm just thrilled you're working out your differences, really, but I have important reports to finish. Reconcile quietly."

Even as he vanished, Claire snickered again, though she did so less raucously. "This is not even a little about you, princess. I mean, I guess Cas wouldn't have met Dean if you didn't exist, but that's not something I can change. But really, I'm doing you and your dad a favor."

"Right."

"Seriously, this isn't some step-sibling rivalry shit. You don't want Cas in your lives. Fuck, I don't want him in my life, but the court says I don't have a choice. It's only been like a month, your dad'll be better off if he ditches Cas now, before he fucks him over."

Emma looked Claire over again, but didn't see anything new; she was still just the same angry, bitter kid in angry, bitter clothes and angry, bitter makeup, suddenly claiming to be acting out of something other than bitter anger.

"Look, I get that you have daddy issues or whatever, but Cas is a good guy. You want to do me and my dad a favor? Back the fuck off. Cas is good to him."

Claire snorted, rolling her eyes on the way to looking away, like she'd given up on Emma entirely. Great. That was just fine by Emma.

"Give it about six years," Claire muttered, but it seemed to be more to herself than to Emma, so Emma didn't bother acknowledging it. Claire and Emma didn't talk again before the lunch bell rang. Little Miss Perfect had buried herself in physics again, which was fine. Better than having to listen to her extolling Cas's virtues, anyway. She had no idea.

Claire had passed the time with a Palahniuk book she'd chosen for a book report. The assignment was dumb, she'd been to a lot of schools lately and none of the others had still had juniors writing book reports, but she figured she'd be able to ruffle a few feathers with a thirteen-year-old girl rampaging through Hell after being killed in a semi-incestuous kinky sex mishap.

She threw the novel onto a nearby chair—overshot, it slid across the seat and dropped to the ground—and stood, making for the hallway. That got Emma's attention.

"What are you doing?"

"Uh, getting lunch?" Duh. Emma glanced uncertainly at Adler's closed door and Claire could nearly feel her eyes dislocating from rolling them so hard, so often. "The Hairless Wonder can't just refuse to let us eat. Besides, he hasn't checked on us in hours, he probably won't even notice. Unless, what, are you gonna tell him?"

Emma frowned, offended. "I didn't tell him that you—" she started, but cut herself off when the principal's door opened.

"What are you doing?" he snapped when he saw Claire poised to leave.

She smirked at Emma, who looked embarrassed at having her words repeated, and gave the same answer: "Lunch? Duh."

"Oh no you don't." Adler actually shook a finger at her, because he had no idea how to not be a loser. "Mrs. Hester will bring you each a sandwich and you'll eat them—carefully!—here. You're not going to be chatting with your friends or causing trouble in my cafeteria, missy, not today."

"This is bullshit," Claire told him, but she sat down because it wasn't really worth more of a fight than that. She didn't have friends to 'chat' with and the food was always awful, so sandwiches couldn't possibly be worse. And it was about time for another round of conversation with Emma, anyway.

The sandwiches came, sad little squares of white bread, slimy ham, and soggy cheese, and Claire waited for the room to empty again. Between one bite of sandwich and the next, Claire asked, "Does Dean know?"

Even knowing she'd regret it, Emma felt compelled to ask, "Does Dean know what?"

"The whole..." Claire waved a negligent hand at her. "You know, gay thing."

"He's dating your dad." Claire didn't seem to get her point, so Emma rolled her eyes and said, "He's bi. It's clearly not a problem. Why the hell wouldn't I tell him?"

Claire shrugged. "Parents are fucking hypocrites all the time. And you're not, like, out. So I wondered."

"You mean like at school? Fuck no. I don't need the kind of grief being out to a bunch of teenage assholes will get me, and it's no one's goddamn business anyway."

Emma didn't realize she was glaring until Claire smirked and put up her hands in mock surrender. "Chill, murder-eyes, I'm not gonna spread it around. Who the fuck would I tell, anyway? I'm just saying, you outed yourself to me pretty quickly."

"You were gonna find out sooner or later, since my dad and Cas are gonna keep seeing each other." Her emphasis on the last part got her another eyeroll. "And I figure you're going to continue to hate me and give me shit as long as that's going on, so it's not going to change anything."

Claire made a face. "I don't... Look." She sat forward, elbows on her thighs, and made unironic eye contact with Emma for probably the first time ever. Definitely the first time that day. "I really don't hate you. You're preppy and prissy and you've got a bit of a stick up your ass, but you're not all that bad. I don't hate you, and I don't hate Dean. He's..."

Claire looked away, eyes going distant, then fixed her blue gaze back on Emma. "He's all right," she said finally. "He obviously cares about you a lot."

Emma, who had only met Claire's dad and seen them interact a couple of times, still knew—"Cas cares about you, too." It earned her a disbelieving snort.

"Too little, too late," Claire said. Then quietly, like she was afraid to voice it but unable to stop herself, "He left us, me and Mom, when I was six." She hadn't meant to say it. At least, not when they'd first been sentenced to enforced together time outside Adler's office. It had seemed like an appropriate thing to say when it came out—she really did want Emma to understand why she and Dean shouldn't pin their hopes on Cas—but she already regretted it.

"Oh," said Emma. She looked more confused than anything.

"We got a check twice a month from the disbursement office, not even from him directly, and that was it. No visits, no birthday cards, nothing."

"Wow, that's... I'm sorry."

Claire's life was turning into an after school special and she desperately needed to stop it. "Ugh, no. Forget I said that. This isn't some kind of pity party, okay? I was just—you know what, doesn't matter. Don't you have some physics to suck at or something?"

Emma opened her mouth, then closed it. The way she squinted at Claire suggested she wasn't done with the conversation, but Claire was, so she just glared back and shoved a quarter of the sandwich in her mouth. It made for an uncomfortably large bite, but the disgusted roll of Emma's eyes was worth it. She grinned and Emma returned her attention to her own lunch. After lunch, which had ended without further discussion, Emma looked at her backpack and couldn't hold back the sigh.

She'd been avoiding studying for her chemistry test. But she'd run out of other things to work on and the test was tomorrow. Chem was her worst subject, which meant she had an A minus that took twice as much effort as her other As. So she pulled out the textbook and opened to the start of the chapter.

On her third failed attempt to work out a balanced reaction, she gave in to her inner drama queen and let out an _ugh_ of frustration. Claire looked over at her, eyebrows raised.

"I don't suppose you're any good with transition metals."

It was meant as a joke and a peace offering. She expected Claire to probably call her a nerd and maybe, just maybe, commiserate about schoolwork. Instead, Claire's eyes widened in surprise and then she smirked. It appeared to be genuine excitement.

"Chem trouble?" she asked, but it wasn't mocking. "My school back home did that before bio, so I've already done a full year."

She gaped as Claire stood and walked over. There were no other options for an appropriate response. Claire noticed.

"We're not friends. But I'm bored and you're decent enough, for a preppy nerd. You're not exactly who I thought you'd be, and honestly I feel a little shitty for grabbing you before. Plus I get to lord my superiority over you, and that's always fun for me."

They got through a whole section—Claire turned out to be really good at explaining things when she tried, and she helped Emma get the stuff that didn't make sense from the teacher or the book—before Emma said, quietly, "We could be."

It wasn't about their dads. She wanted to be civil for their sake, sure, but Claire wasn't who Emma had been expecting either, exactly. She was angry and sarcastic as hell, but she was okay company when she wasn't directing those at Emma. And despite spending her whole life around the same group of kids, Emma didn't really have other friends.

"We could what?" Claire asked. Which was fair, given how much of a tangent it was to their current discussion of ions.

"Be friends."

Claire laughed, more startled than mean.

"I dunno about that, princess."

But when she bullied Principal Adler into letting them go to the bathroom again, she offered Emma one of her cigarettes. Cas and Dean showed up together. Claire wondered if they'd had a little pow-wow in the parking lot before coming in. Probably an argument, given how they were pointedly not looking at each other and kept a stiff distance despite the small room.

Cas in particular looked drawn, his wrinkles more pronounced than ever and his whole face just kind of gray. Tired. He looked like a man who hadn't slept in years. Adler brought the two men into his office alone before they could talk to her or Emma, leaving them still waiting outside.

Emma looked nervous.

"Chill," Claire advised. "It's not like you're going to get in any trouble."

"Sure, that's why he made me sit here all day, too. Just to tell my dad nothing was wrong."

She had a point.

Less snarkily, Emma said, "But that's not what I'm worried about. They looked like they were fighting."

That had been the whole point of her attack on Emma and even if the two of them had kind of reconciled—and it pissed her off that Adler had actually managed to accomplish that with his stupid fucking time out—it didn't mean she and Cas were suddenly okay. So Claire should have been happy that her efforts had worked out, but she just felt as exhausted as Cas looked.

Emma was actually pretty cool. Given some time, as long as Emma let Claire give her a hard time about things, the princess might've been right about them being friends. But Dean and Cas breaking up could put a stop to that, because Emma would blame her, and Claire didn't like that idea.

She didn't want Cas happy, but she didn't want to fuck up her own life just to fuck up his. If nothing else, he didn't deserve that much power over her.

"All right," she said, "I'm calling a truce."

Emma frowned at her. "I kinda thought we already had one?"

"Not with you. On Cas, and all things Cas-related. Including his relationship with your dad. I still think he's gonna fuck it up," she pointed out when Emma started looking too hopeful, "but I'm done letting it be my problem. I've warned you, so don't blame me when he hurts Dean."

"Why the sudden change of heart?"

Claire didn't want to explain the whole convoluted train of her decision, but covered it well enough with, "I'm over it. He's not worth the effort."

Though she looked a bit less anxious, Emma asked, "What if it's too late?"

She shrugged. "If they're done over their first fight, that's on them. But we can tell them we're fine, if it means that much to you." Zachariah's day had improved from the mess of the morning, and that made him cheerful. He hadn't gotten to expel Novak, but she'd actually behaved herself. She and Winchester had assured their fathers that they'd overcome their differences, just as he'd expected, and he wouldn't have problems from them again. He was excellent at his job.

Not having to kick her out had the added bonuses of less paperwork for him and unending gratitude from her father. Zachariah could admit to himself that he'd felt a bit of satisfaction, even pleasure, at watching Castiel Novak trying not to break down in his office. Hopefully he'd take a lesson from the day, too, and shape up as a parent. Zachariah had offered him many suggestions on how to do that, as well as the importance of having a caring and non-psychotic woman in Claire's life, and now he could only wait and see if Castiel took his advice to heart.

Dean had looked thoughtful at that idea, so maybe Emma would be able to look forward a positive female role model soon, too. It was about time, he had been single as long as Zachariah had been teaching his daughter. Though Emma was an excellent student, her social skills were lacking. Dean was a man's man, stoic and tough, and Emma could use a softer touch to help her fit in with her peers.

He made a mental note to bring that up next time there was a parents' night, assuming Dean hadn't started dating on his own by then. Maybe he'd even point him towards a few ladies who he thought would be good for the two of them. He was on a roll, and he owed it to the community to continue improving their lives.

He'd made the girls into friends, and their fathers too. Dean and Castiel had been tense when they came into his office, angry at each other over their daughters' conduct. But by the time he'd finished explaining how they were failing at the admittedly challenging task of raising teenage girls as single men, they seemed to be doing better. As they left behind the clique-of-two that Winchester and Novak had become, he'd heard them making plans for getting together over coffee. No doubt they would exchange parenting tips and finding love. Maybe they'd even watch each other's children when one or the other of them went on dates.

He played another few rounds of solitaire after they left, winding down from his taxing day before heading home. Mrs. Muffin, his cat, was always so demanding. He deserved some time to himself before subjecting himself to that.

When he finally did make it out to the staff parking lot, all the other cars were gone. But that wasn't why his Mercedes immediately drew his eye: some vandal had painted the beautiful silver body an eye-searingly bright pink. Rushing over, he found the offending color wasn't paint at all, but a covering of sticky notes, each one painstakingly placed so that no gap let the true color through.

Grumbling, he set to tearing them off by the handful. Mrs. Muffin would miss her dinner, but he couldn't be seen driving his car in that condition. At least he had something to keep him busy and out of unnecessary teacher meetings tomorrow: he had to hunt down the culprit.


End file.
